COMPLAINTS HANDLING POLICY

We are committed to providing a high-quality legal service to all our clients.  When something goes wrong, we need you to tell us about it.  This will help us to improve our standards.

If you have a complaint, please contact us with the details.

What will happen next?

  1. We will send you a letter acknowledging receipt of your complaint within 7 days of receiving it, enclosing a copy of this procedure.
  2. We will then investigate your complaint. This will normally involve passing your complaint to our client care partner, Sian Williams, who will review your matter file and speak to the member of staff who acted for you. During the investigation process we will attempt to identify the cause of the problems you have reported and address the issues raised.
  3. Sian Williams will then invite you (if possible) to a meeting to discuss and hopefully resolve your complaint. She will do this within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
  4. Within three days of the meeting (if this takes place), Sian Williams will write to you to confirm what took place and any solutions she has agreed with you.
  5. If you do not want a meeting or it is not possible, Sian Williams will send you a detailed written reply to your complaint, including her suggestions for resolving the matter, within 21 days of sending you the acknowledgement letter.
  6. At this stage, if you are still not satisfied, you should contact us again and we will arrange for Sian Williams to review the decision.
  7. We will write to you within 14 days of receiving your request for a review, confirming our final position on your complaint and explaining our reasons.
  8. If you remain dissatisfied at the end of our complaints process, you would then be at liberty to contact the Legal Ombudsman, provided you are an individual, a personal representative of a deceased person, a “micro-enterprise” (having fewer than 10 employees and annual turnover or assets not exceeding 2 million Euros), a charity or club/association with annual income of less than £1 million, or a trustee of a Trust with assets of less than £1 million.  The Legal Ombudsman can investigate complaints up to 6 years from the date of the problem happening or within 3 years of when someone should have found out about the problem.  However, if we send a final written response to your complaint within 8 weeks of receiving it, the time limit for you to refer the matter to the Legal Ombudsman would be 6 months from the date of that final response.

If you would like more information about the Legal Ombudsman, their contact details are as follows:-

  • Website – www.legalombudsman.org.uk
  • Telephone – 0300 555 0333 between 8.30am and 5.30pm (calls to 03 numbers will cost no more than calls to national geographic numbers (starting 01 or 02) from both mobiles and landlines.  Calls are recorded and may be used for training and monitoring purposes.
  • Email – enquiries@legalombudsman.org.uk
  • Postal address – Legal Ombudsman, PO Box 6806, Wolverhampton, WV1 9WJ.

Alternative complaints resolution bodies also exist and are competent to deal with complaints about legal services, should both you and our firm wish to use such a scheme at the end of our internal complaints process.  They provide Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) services.  Small Claims Mediation is one such body, details of which can be found at www.small-claims-mediation.co.uk; and another is Ombudsman Services, details of which can be found at www.ombudsman-services.org.  Under the provisions of the EU Directive on Consumer Alternative Dispute Resolution, to pursue this process you would have to be a “consumer” namely an individual acting for purposes which are wholly or main outside your trade business, craft or profession.